Blogging & E-Mail Should Bring Us Closer Together ... BUT

Blogger is having a problem with embedded comments. That's where the comment box shows up under the blog post instead of on a separate page.

What's happening is this: Folks come to the main page of your blog, find an interesting post and want to comment. There are three ways to get to where they can leave a comment - click the link for comments, the post title for those who have complete posts shown on the main page, or "Read More" for those who use "jumps". Any of these is supposed to bring up the post, with the comment box, on a page by itself if you use embedded comments.

Instead users are getting blank or partial pages. In my case I get the post title and perhaps the first paragraph or pic, but nothing after that, I can't scroll, and neither right or left mouse clicks are effective. The browser controls (ie:menus, buttons, tabs) all function normally, but nothing on that page works.

There have been several variations on this theme posted to the blogger help forum with similar responses:

"We've raised this with Google Engineering. Until it is fixed I would suggest settings your comments to either Full-Screen or Pop up rather than Embed.

NOTE: The problem does not happen with Google Chrome. It seems to be a problem with just Internet Explorer

Hopefully Google will announce when the issues are fixed."

I tried to leave a comment on someone's blog yesterday, and when it didn't work I emailed them. When I checked later the comments came on as "full page", so I have to assume she changed her settings from embedded.

I say I have to assume because I don't know if she responded to my email. If so, it probably got bounced back to her with a message that the address didn't exist. You see, it's like this...

I have one persistent spammer that I keep getting mail from no matter how many times I flag it as junk, so I investigated my provider's "Blacklist" feature. The name is on the list, as well as a few that shouldn't be. Yet I still get spam from her, in the inbox, not the junk page. Under the list is a little box with the label "Decline Receipt - Do Not Deliver E-mails". So I check this box, delete the names that shouldn't be on the list and save the settings.

And receive no email for two days, not even my regular newsletters. Well, of course I know right where to go - back to the blacklist page. And there, right at the top of the blacklist is a new entry that I didn't make. An Asterisk.

Remember DOS? Remember how an asterisk was the wildcard for any string of characters? Well it appears to work the same way in this blacklist, so it refused ALL INCOMING MESSAGES!.

If one of them was yours, I AM SO SORRY! I've fixed the problem, and I hope you'll get back to me again. I'll have to wait a few days to see if this got me kicked off of any mailing lists.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll have to communicate by Psychic Wolf.
Or Carrier Owl. But don't worry, I won't send you a rat.